Sundry and Vary

A liberal ponders Baltimore, and while he professes to be optimistic certainly seems not to be. His optimism is founded on “hopefully we’ll have an exceptional leader” is his only hope having found that process and and representational liberal solutions have failed. This is hardly unsurprising as social destruction of the two atomic parent family and those discounted (by liberals) conservative values being lost trump process liberalism and representation.

My thoughts on Baltimore mirror what has been said elsewhere (including perhaps badly by the President). Even though liberals and elites think terrorism on the other side of the globe doesn’t sully the message. They. Are. Wrong. In the Middle East and, say, the Chechen mountains murdering civilians rightly invalidates your message. Do you want people to respect your right to self govern in Palestine? Then stop killing women and children with bombs. Do you want police to take more care in their jobs? Then don’t riot, steal, and destroy. One of the complaints of inner city slums is that everything costs more locally than it does in the exurbs. Guess what? You just made it even more expensive. Good work. You just bought the Baltimore police free sympathy, after all, look at what they’ve been dealing with.

The other thought on Baltimore is that this is a continuation of a retrogressive civilizing trend that’s been going on for quite some time. In the 19th century wars had a lot more conventions and rules. We’ve gone away from that and it’s not a good thing. It’s a sign of less order, less thought, and less honestly and honor. A fight between individuals (or nations) doesn’t have to be a “until you call uncle” affair, but could … if the combatants be civil decided at a stage significantly sooner. More akin to a duel, which is sometimes but less frequently, “to the death” but decided by an agreement to hold to the outcome of a symbolic struggle. Nations too could struggle via proxy, if they could honorably and honestly hold to the outcome of said proxy contest. Alas, men aren’t by and large honest anymore. Certainly not our world leaders at any rate.

In light of the NRO article about DA Chislom using his office to quash political opponents. He’s not backing down, but upping the ante. In the absence of any liberals coming to his defense, which seems to imply his position isn’t defensible, where are the cries from the left against him?

Tasting the winds of change. Mr Fernandez is not optimistic about the crises in education as typified in the recent failure of a chain of colleges in California, which if Baltimore hadn’t irrupted we’d be talking about today.

At least my kids did some free running. Those in authority which went against that Maryland couple who let their kids walk from parks to home … should be tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail.

What the climate models have demonstrated very well. A succinct way of putting it, is that these models all operate under the principle that CO2 is a driver of global warming. They they all fail, demonstrates the converse, CO2 is not the driver of climate.

10 comments

#5 Actually this is pretty powerful stuff. To establish criminal libel, the DA will have to show that the entire story about the ‘John Doe’ warrent and strong arm search is made up hogwash. Why would that imply to you his (the DA’s) position isn’t ‘defenseable’? It is starting to sound like the entire thing didn’t even happen, let alone didn’t happen the way National Review reported it. You should welcome a prosecution as it would make all the facts come out and put people under oath. If it turns out that the whole story was made up why shouldn’t you be outraged?

#4. Sympathy for what? The law doesn’t apply to them. Again this whole anti-SSM thing has been a huge embarassment for the right. We began with predictions of the end of civilization and we end with fretting about whether anti-discrimination laws may require bakers and trinket makers to sell to people hosting gay weddings.

#1/2/3 – As often happens when a riot breaks out, pundit types end up trying to practice sociology without a license. The result is usually no insights other than the pundit discovering reinforcement for whatever his particular hobby hoarse happens to be (‘atomic family breakdown’ in your case, in others perhaps its living wage laws, drug sentencing laws and so on).

Fact is Baltimore’s riot probably consisted of less than 200 active participants and I bet if you eliminated 50 or less of the most active rioters you would have eliminated 80% of the riot.

Why do riots happen? Lots of people on the street (esp. young men) and a perception that authority has been ‘suspended’. Large, unorganized protests are therefore always prime candidates for riots breaking out because the protest itself often presents a challenge to authority. (This is also why large sporting events sometimes but not always create riots…the perception that ‘authority is suspended’ is not as easily triggered but provide enough people ‘celebrating’ with enough beer and you can get it to come out)

Totaltarian regimes have always restricted public assemblies. Why? Because they know that is the prime way riots happen. They don’t try to avoid riots by tinkering with family structures or waxing on about morality. Human nature here is roughly a constant.

#2 Not really sure what you’re trying to say here. To talk about terrorists ‘sullying the message’ exactly who do you consider terrorists to be the spokesmen for beyond their own individual groups. For example, who do you credit Al Qaeda with speaking for? All of the Middle East? Saudi Arabia? Muslims? By what criteria have they earned that designation? Because they caught multiple news cycles?

Boonton,
#5. You have to be kidding. Let’s see. First off a DA uses his position not to arrest people or to put them in jail … but to use SWAT teams to terrorize them and disrupt their lives. Having done that, he’s now apparently going to do the same to anyone who objects. “You should welcome a prosecution as it would make all the facts come out and put people under oath. If it turns out that the whole story was made up why shouldn’t you be outraged?” Well, gosh. Why wouldn’t you like to have your family terrorized and lose your job? You should welcome that. That’s remarkably daft.

#4. The liberal elite have no sympathy for religious liberty. That’s what.

This is also why large sporting events sometimes but not always create riots

You do realize that “large sporting events” almost never create riots. There are 10-15 baseball games every day for example, every one of them is a large sporting event. So the actual truth is “large sport events” almost never create riots.

They don’t try to avoid riots by tinkering with family structures or waxing on about morality. Human nature here is roughly a constant.

??? What? Whose tinkering? Democrat policies destroyed the family structure of the poor in this country. Yet oddly enough you are so blind to not even believe it. You’d think that you, with your “economic forces drive more than we think” POV would realize that making abortion cheap and available, making divorce easy, making it easier for women to work would make single family homes and broken families more and more prevalent. Odd then that when this happens and you don’t seem to notice the causes. Unfortunately this is a double bind, the more perceptive Democrats who realize this also realize those are also the forces which keep those most effective voting Democrat so they aren’t interested in change. Those that didn’t notice, well, they place them blame elsewhere. Oh, “Human nature is roughly a constant”. Except it isn’t. Single family percentages in society, rates of abortion, of divorce and so on actually aren’t constant. You know that. Why pretend differently?

Re #2. I see. Terrorists like Hamas, Al-Qaeda, the Chechens are bombing for the fun of it. Man. You are completely disconnected with anything resembling the real world sometimes. You do realize that without tacit support of the people of which they live in the midst terrorists couldn’t exist.

Fact is Baltimore’s riot probably consisted of less than 200 active participants

If true this actually mostly serves to highlight the incompetence and pure ideological stupidity of the Baltimore politicians and those in “command”. They mustered more than 200, and actually likely more than 2000 “active” police and guard responders. Those “200” active participants should have been collared frog marched to detainment and the whole thing shut down within an hour or two of it being detected. 10 cops per rioter means no riot if the cops do anything productive. Hell, they’d just have to merge in and mingle. The passive cop to active rioter ratio would have killed the whole thing right there. It’s kind of hard to loot a store if 5 cops are walking in with you and watching your every move.

#5 You are assuming the story is true. How do we know the story is true? As I previously pointed out, the story seems pretty suspect because it is so over the top.

#4 No sympathy for religious liberty because an anti-discrimination law does not apply to a for-profit ‘marriage hut’? Really there is no there there. You don’t have any actual examples, these are all hypotheticals…maybe an anti-discrimination law will apply to an offbeat marriage ‘business’ that happens to be some type of fusion of a religous group and a for-profit, secular enterprise. If this is what you have to worry about then your life has become too boring.l

You do realize that “large sporting events” almost never create riots. There are 10-15 baseball games every day for example, every one of them is a large sporting event.

Most sporting events themselves these days are highly controlled. Think about it, going to a stadium means submitting to more authority than someone walking on a street in North Korea submits too. You are searched, screened, assigned seats, subject to be ‘escorted out’ by security at will with no ability to appeal, while there you are subject to constant video monitoring as well. Of course beer costing $10+ a cup doesn’t help. Before all of this, though, you could pull off riots in sports stadiums and people did. Post sporting event ‘celebrations’ however are still prone for riots.

??? What? Whose tinkering? Democrat policies destroyed the family structure of the poor in this country.

Riots used to be much more common. Not just the 60’s but before as well. Again see Gangs of New York for some reference framing. If you think social family structure drives riots then the ‘atomic family’ was a failure.

The ‘atomic family’ was also a bit of a myth. Most of human history, with high death rates, being raised to adulthood by both biological parents primarily was a bit unusual. The norm was extended families and blended families (why do you think ‘wicked stepmothers’ feature so much in fairy tales?). The norm of the two parent, independent household raising kids was what appears to be a temporary creation of the American frontier (cheap land) and the post war boom.

Re #2. I see. Terrorists like Hamas, Al-Qaeda, the Chechens are bombing for the fun of it. Man. You are completely disconnected with anything resembling the real world sometimes

Didn’t say that. I said what have these groups done to merit the honor of being considered spokesmen for anyone but themselves?

If true this actually mostly serves to highlight the incompetence and pure ideological stupidity of the Baltimore politicians and those in “command”. They mustered more than 200, and actually likely more than 2000 “active” police and guard responders.

Listening to a radio story a few days ago about an area that had a lot of crime. They started pulling the data they had and discovered something like 15 people were connected somehow to 80% of the shootings in the area. They crafted a special outreach offering to help them change their life, something like 5 or 6 of them were dead or in jail but most of the rest took them up on the offer and the area saw a large drop in crime. The removal of those few not only directly cut into the crime rate but had a knock on effect since they were a type of ‘role model’ giving dozens of lesser criminals a sense of permission. But that was over a long period of time. Similiar effects have been found with STD’s. You may recall the Galdwell book that noted the bar that appeared linked to something like 80% of the sysphilus cases in a city.

A riot is a short period of time and the key people are not going to be wearing bright uniforms to make them easily identifiable among the many bystandards, half hearted participants, victims and others. 200 people may be almost the entire problem but you’re going to need more than 2000 responders to get to them unless you have the time to build up a lot of intelligence. Which I believe, BTW, is how soccar hooligans were squashed by Europe. The regular rioters were identified, put on watch lists and prevented from buying tickets or entering the stadium to begin with. Problem solved and at the end of the day the actual number of core trouble makers was a tiny portion of those going to the games.

Given your job you should be well aware of how often the 80-20 rule is true. Your fighting it here because allowing yourself to admit the truth, that riots are essentially random functions driven by a statistically trivial number of individuals, will prevent you from being able to practice sociology waxing on about your pet causes as the ‘root causes’ of a particular riot.

Those “200” active participants should have been collared frog marched to detainment and the whole thing shut down within an hour or two of it being detected

Actually I said 50 core participants…which makes it even harder to handle. Consider the case in NYC of an associate college teacher who was arrested. The story was he picked up a garbage can and threw it at cops. Cops tried to arrest him but others came to his defense and fought the cops and he got away. I suspect that the 5 or 6 people who fought the cops on his behalf would probably have not done anything besides protest had it not been for them seeing the cops and the guy struggling (and if they didn’t see him throw the can they might have assumed the cops were attacking one of their own for no reason). If he didn’t throw the can, the fight wouldn’t have broken out. So one person instigates and that drives 4 to 5 additional actions that otherwise wouldn’t have happened. Why not keep him out of the protest to begin with? Well he probably appeared just like any other person until that moment.

Not in my experience. The entrance security is “security theater”. In the past few years, my #1 daughter became a baseball fan so I’ve been to a few games. My backpack was never searched, wasn’t wanded and once I forgot to “unpack” and had a leatherman strapped to my belt the whole time, which has two 4-5 inch lock blades and a few interesting tools. Beer isn’t quite as expensive as you think and people who are spending $50 for tickets are not balking at getting drunk at $6-7 a pop. Again riots are uncommon not common. There are 12-15 baseball games every night. During the winter likewise for hockey and the NBA. How many of these lead to riots. Almost none. Riots unlike your claim are very very rare and it isn’t because of security.

Again see Gangs of New York for some reference framing. If you think social family structure drives riots then the ‘atomic family’ was a failure.

Hmm. Well you could go the econ route, and blame “The Great Wave” (Hackett-Fischer).

Given your job you should be well aware of how often the 80-20 rule is true.

Well. Remember I’m a proponent of the Israeli .22 caliber method of quelling riots. I still think more than 200 were involved. Again your core instigator numbers are lower, but that isn’t your claim. You said 200 rioters. Not 200 instigating thousands.

But the riot is not the point. The point is you are making the claim that there aren’t structural social problems in Baltimore. You are alone in this claim. You think that transition from normally two parent households to single parent households as the norm among the inner city poor has no social consequences. Nobody, including you, I claim believe that.

If he didn’t throw the can, the fight wouldn’t have broken out. So one person instigates and that drives 4 to 5 additional actions that otherwise wouldn’t have happened. Why not keep him out of the protest to begin with? Well he probably appeared just like any other person until that moment.

“security theater” probably does add to the perception that authority is not suspended. If they happened to miss a blade in your belt, that isn’t really all that important. What matters is that in your unconscious mind you would imagine that if you pulled that knife out and started slashing at the other team’s fans, the result would you being quickly tackled and ending up at a bail hearing in handcuffs, not becoming a Braveheart type hero to your fellow fans as you lead them en mass rampaging onto the field.

Hmm. Well you could go the econ route, and blame “The Great Wave”

Perhaps, either way riots were a lot more common in the past. There seems to be no link to ‘family structure’ or general morality.

But the riot is not the point. The point is you are making the claim that there aren’t structural social problems in Baltimore.

Who ever made such a claim? Exactly what place on earth or in history could the claim that “there are structural social problems in X” not be a true one? If that is your insight how much credit do you think you deserve?

There are 12-15 baseball games every night. During the winter likewise for hockey and the NBA.

This would tend to preclude riots. As I said the ideal combination for a riot is lots of people and a perception that authority has been suspended. Lots of events dilutes how many people, which is why most sports related riots happen either with major events (or more commonly are motivated by a sporting event but don’t actually happen at the stadium…when you hear about a riot happening after a home team has won something big, it probably started after improptu ‘street celebrations’ rather than in the stadium itself).

Well. Remember I’m a proponent of the Israeli .22 caliber method of quelling riots. I still think more than 200 were involved.

I would model this the same way you might model a video ‘going viral’. You have millions of users, a few users are hyper about pushing a video. Most users are in the middle. They unlikely to push a video unless a lot of others are doing it too. Most of the time the hyper users are just people screaming in an empty room. But if odds are right every now and then you might get some hypers hitting the note at just the right way to make some more modest users feel just enough peer pressure to share the video too, if that threshold is enough, it will soon start pushing the vast majority of otherwise sedate users to share the video too and then it is a huge hit.

A very small group in any large crowd is ready for action at the first opportunity. The vast majority will shy away unless everyone is doing it so that the threshold of inhibition is crossed. Likewise there are some who will never join in no matter what the peer pressure and there will be those who will play the ‘angel’ role to the ‘devils’…seeking to counter pressure towards riot.

If you look at models like the ‘game of life’ you’ll see a familiar pattern. Most of the time the random configurations of people will mix ‘hypers’ among so many more lame people that the configuration is never prone to riot. But random configurations are by definition random. Sometimes the draw will put enough ‘hypers’ close to each other to generation enough pressure to pass the threshold of those who are just a bit higher than the ‘hypers’. Each one who joins then is adding to the peer pressure which results in more joining until you have a full blown riot. Like any other fad or epidemic, though, once a critical threshold is passed the riot quickly burns itself out since the number of people is not infinite.

“security theater” probably does add to the perception that authority is not suspended.

I doubt it. I don’t remember seeing security in the stands (on the field, yes) at all during the games I’ve seen.

What matters is that in your unconscious mind you would imagine that if you pulled that knife out and started slashing at the other team’s fans, the result would you being quickly tackled and ending up at a bail hearing in handcuffs, not becoming a Braveheart type hero to your fellow fans as you lead them en mass rampaging onto the field.

That makes no sense. At the games I’ve been to, the relation between opposing team fans has been quite affable and sportsman like. If you pulled your knife, far from Braveheart, I think that while the security would be somewhat long in coming, you’d find no support from anyone.

Point is, unlike your claim people congregate a sports events and get drunk together a lot more than you imagine and riots don’t break out. You need more reasons why not, because ‘security’ is not realistically the primary reason.

I would model this the same way you might model a video ‘going viral’. [… … to the end]

Seems you’ve missed the Israeli point, and don’t remember it. It takes just a cop or to to implement. You are a policeman seeing a riot. You identify the two or three loudest instigators. Put a .22 caliber bullet in the lung of those three. They lose interest in rioting and shouting. Oddly enough a .22 in a lung is almost never fatal … it does make the victim very much less interested in inciting violence and, well, shouting.

Point is, with 200 rioters and 2000+ riot police the only reason the riot wasn’t put down was the police weren’t there to put down the riot.

That makes no sense. At the games I’ve been to, the relation between opposing team fans has been quite affable and sportsman like.

Good crowd management policy makes it that way. Or, perhaps, your alternative theory is that the sports you attend attract people with a different type of human nature? Basketball, Baseball, football, boxing, all attract spectators with a different human nature than, say, soccar? But ‘soccar hooligans’ seem to mostly be a thing of the past these days so has human nature changed once again?

The typical sporting event these days is highly controlled, even if you don’t see the controls. Remember, stadiums and major professional sports are big dollars these days. Just like Disneyworld, every aspect of your experience is studied with the goal of increasing revenue per seat. No doubt a side effect of that is riots are now very unlikely to happen inside any major stadium even if the primary purpose of all this control was not security to begin with.

Point is, with 200 rioters and 2000+ riot police the only reason the riot wasn’t put down was the police weren’t there to put down the riot.

Didn’t say 200 rioters only. It was even less than that. I said 80% of the riot wouldn’t have happened if you eliminated 50 or so of the worst out of the 200.

What you forget here is that we aren’t talking about 200 people on the street, we are talking about thousands. The 50 or so ‘super seeds’ and the remaining 150 or so ‘moderate seeds’ are not all gathered in one spot with clear labels. They are dispersed in a large crowd that is mostly apathetic. Simply laying down a lot of gunfire might ‘solve’ the riot problem but then again so would setting off a nuclear bomb.

Perhaps an example you may relate too here would be Do the Right Thing. Here you begin with a scuffle that results with the police chocking a popular person to death, which escalates into an angry mob on the street of maybe 40-50 people at most. The ‘riot’, though, was set off when Mookie picks up a trash can and throws it into the pizzeria. At that point maybe another 4 or 5 people actively trash the place. Before that moment you had tension, yes, hostility, yes, but ultimately not a riot.

By your argument, 2 or 3 cops alone should have been sufficient to stop it. After all, Mookie was just one scrawny kid. But thats the problem. Before the riot you wouldn’t have picked him out as the ‘one’. If you had to guess who was going to be ‘the one’ (if any) it would have probably been someone else in that crowd. The show of force was needed to break the shift in perception that happened with the trash can, namely that authority was suspended.

Good crowd management policy makes it that way. (and) The typical sporting event these days is highly controlled, even if you don’t see the controls

Yes. And you can’t see elphants wearing sneakers because … they are very sneaky. The notion that security theater and very very few security people are effective “because they are good” and that “the relations between opposing teams fans at games is congenial” because of the security theater is an unassailable position. The reason (in your mind) that games don’t have riots is because of excellent security. Here’s the thing. Yes. Professional sports are big money and would have a lot of reasons why games should be safe. You do realize also they are also on a budget and aren’t going to be wasting money if it isn’t needed. At the same time you know actual fans don’t want rioting. Which is mostly to the point.

But ‘soccer hooligans’ seem to mostly be a thing of the past these days so has human nature changed once again?

Uhm, in part this is true. There are many em>cultural differences between soccer fans in South America and Europe are different than North American (US) fans. We come from different countries. We have different responses to lots of things.

Simply laying down a lot of gunfire might ‘solve’ the riot problem but then again so would setting off a nuclear bomb.

True. But that is a straw man, i.e., not the method suggested.

The ‘riot’, though, was set off when Mookie picks up a trash can and throws it into the pizzeria. At that point maybe another 4 or 5 people actively trash the place. Before that moment you had tension, yes, hostility, yes, but ultimately not a riot.

Which is an interesting point. “Tension” is lacking at most games.

Most US riots related to sports haven’t happened “between” fans, but not in the stadium after the championship was won. But this hasn’t happened for a few years. After Chicago won the NBA championship the first time there were riots. After that, the police were prepared. And riots didn’t occur. In fact those methods were used in other cities to keep riots down. Baltimore could have stopped the riots. If you anticipate even a little, they have the know how to stop it. They didn’t. It was a choice.

Look. You can’t argue the Israeli method doesn’t work. They use it in very hostile places were riots are far more likely. It is a method that works. You *can* argue that it isn’t legal or ethical. That is a different question. Just don’t argue it doesn’t work. It is in use and it works. End of that part of the story.

You do realize also they are also on a budget and aren’t going to be wasting money if it isn’t needed. At the same time you know actual fans don’t want rioting. Which is mostly to the point.

And people in the street want rioting? How did cities ever get built if so many people who live in them want to riot? Very, very few people want to riot. Even people who do riot probably did not wake up that morning wanting to riot.

And if security theater is ineffective how does that square with your statement that stadiums are ‘on a budget’? Why search the bags then if that adds nothing to either the safety of the event (safe people buy more stuff)?

I think what you are missing here is that the bag searches are partially effective when it comes to an individual person trying to get something he shouldn’t in. If you were to get the bag check department together and ask them what interesting things they intercepted over the past year I suspect they are going to have stuff to show you. The ‘theater’ then acts like a filter. It may not necessarily stop someone trying to sneak a weapon in but it may. This alters the calculations for someone planning something since by raising the probability of interception the risk of the plan failing goes up. To the degree that the plan involves more than a single person, the more people the more chances for failure.

Uhm, in part this is true. There are many em>cultural differences between soccer fans in South America and Europe are different than North American (US) fans.

Soccar rioting was common in Northern Europe too. Now it isn’t. The reason is not a sudden increase in sportmanship or a change in the genetic makeup of Northern Europeans. It was a concerted effort to beef up security and identify, track and restrict a very small number of chronic rioters from the games. I suspect another element is modern crowd control. Stadiums today are designed to try to avoid things like stampedes that killed people in the past (as well as to move people into and out of shopping areas efficiently). This may make riots harder to happen than in the streets where there is more freedom of movement.

Most US riots related to sports haven’t happened “between” fans, but not in the stadium after the championship was won. But this hasn’t happened for a few years. After Chicago won the NBA championship the first time there were riots. After that, the police were prepared.

As I said the key elements IMO are lots of people out and about and a perception that authority is suspended. Lots of people out and very angry at authority could do that. Lots of people out and in a mode of high pitched celebration could also do that. As you point out, by having the police preparing before a huge victory, riots don’t happen. Prepared police usually means making them very visible….out in uniform, mounted on horses etc. These all lend to the illusion that ‘someone’ is in charge of things and that inhibits riots. Again there is a reason totaltarian regimes have always restricted public gatherings regardless of their purpose.